"Your face is too dark
for my sensors to --"
"Bitch, I'm black and I'm proud."
"Tell your sensors to calibrate that."
"I have no reference for "black."
"No. Of course you don't."
In our hyper-connected world,
where most of us carry around handheld devices
that keep us linked to the
internet at all times
and tech companies monitor our behavior
and purchasing habits constantly,
a game in which you harness that
technological web to disrupt
the schemes of powerful corporations~
makes perfect sense.
But with 2014's Watch Dogs,
Ubisoft failed to turn this premise
into a compelling game.
Watch Dogs 2 makes some meaningful
improvements on its predecessor.
It gives us a more memorable hero
and supporting cast,
and a San Francisco that exudes a
bit more more personality
than the first games' setting did.
Unfortunately, Watch Dogs 2 still fails
where it matters most:
trotting out a series of crushingly-repetitive
missions that never come close to making you feel
like a hacker extraordinaire.
Nearly every main story mission
has you infiltrating some heavily-guarded facility
or another, in order to steal something,
or hack something,
and once you find a strategy that works for you,
it's very easy to fall into a pattern of approaching
all of these missions in more or less the same way.
Your character, Marcus Holloway,
can't take much punishment,
and the environments are filled with enemies
who will immediately call for more reinforcements
at any sign of trouble --
so you're discouraged from relying on the
all-out, guns-blazing approach.
This makes sense in a game that wants you
to use your hacker abilities to tackle
the situations you're faced with,
but because failure in this game can be
so punishing,
and send you back so far,
I tended to complete most missions
using the same tactic;
the core of my strategy was hanging back,
hacking into the building's security systems,
and picking off the enemies who could call
for reinforcements one-by-one,
by forging criminal records and having the police
come in and arrest or kill them.
It was passive and often tedious,
but it got the job done.
Of course, sometimes it's a strength
when a game punishes you for failure.
In games with precise combat,
the prospect of a significant setback
can raise the stakes,
encouraging you to master the mechanics,
and making your victories all the more rewarding.
But Watch Dogs 2 is no such game.
This is no Dark Souls.
This is a by-the-numbers, open world game
with mediocre gun play and systems that interact
so erratically, that all you can do is try to
manage them well enough to complete
your objective and get out alive.
As shabby as the mission design is,
the game deserves some credit for its
obviously well-intentioned efforts to acknowledge
the existence of structural racism.
At one point, the young black protagonist, Marcus,
discusses the racial profiling tactics that
tagged him as a criminal risk.
And his brother-in-arms, Horatio,
whose day job is at the Google stand-in, "Nudle,"
comments frankly on the racism and
condencension he experiences as one of the only
people of color in an
overwhelmingly-white company.
"You haven't experienced
corporate life until you're the only brother
in a meeting and have to represent
all of blackdom."
"Jesus!"
The presence of Miranda
a black trans councilwoman
who does what she can
to help Marcus and his colleagues
in the hacker collective known as "DedSec"
is also welcome.
On the other hand,
Latinx people in Watch Dogs 2 are
primarily represented as the most clichéd
kinds of gang members imaginable.
As important as it is that games give us heroes
and supporting characters who break from
the long-established molds,
there's more to great characterization than
simply ticking off a few boxes
on a diversity checklist.
And Watch Dogs 2 falls short here.
Its characters relate to each other more in
geek, sci-fi references and cheesy one-liners,
than in anything that actually reveals to us
who they are,
and what makes them tick.
So it's hard to get invested in their struggle
and their relationships with each other.
"Come on, Wesley Crusher! Launch waits!"
"Bitch, please. I'm clearly Sisko."
"Jake Sisko?"
"CAPTAIN Sisko."
The San Francisco setting of Watch Dogs 2
is recognizable but doesn't feel authentic --
despite being packed with landmarks
and familiar locations,
including San Francisco's greatest treasure
the sea lions down at Pier 39.
It's great to see Pride flags flying in
certain spots around the city,
and Watch Dogs 2 makes no effort
to minimize or deny the existence of
SF's queer community.
But for all that, the game's concerns
feel oddly detached from the real issues
that face San Francisco today.
Graffiti that reads
"ARTISTS USED TO LIVE HERE"
poignantly speaks to the fact that
entire communities are being driven out of the city
as tech companies make life here unsustainable
for so many.
And the occasional passerby may make mention
of the gentrification that's taking place:
"Super gentrification! It's wretched!"
So why isn't DedSec using its power
to stand up for marginalized communities?
Why isn't DedSec fighting for affordable housing,
and fighting against the police injustice
that specifically targets people of color?
Why not confront the things
that are really happening here?
The things that really matter to
the people who call San Francisco home?
Perhaps the strangest thing of all
about Watch Dogs 2, though,
is its uneasy relationship with power.
Ostensibly, DedSec is all about
waking up the populace,
getting them to understand
how power is abused by politicians,
tech companies, and government agencies
to limit people's freedom
to think and act for themselves.
But what DedSec never does,
is turn that questioning lens on its own use
and abuse, of power.
It was never lost on me that,
playing as a young black man
who had been profiled as a likely criminal
because of his race,
I then harnessed the power of techonology
to forge criminal records for dozens and dozens
of innocent people,
and watched them get marched off
by the cops themselves.
But hey, what was I gonna do?
I had a mission to complete.
"We will not stand idle while that happens."
"DedSec has given you the truth."
"Do what you will."